The External Costs of Wind Energy — and What They Mean for Energy Policy?

Ever since studies on external costs of electricity began in the late 1980s, one of the driving forces behind the interest in the subject has been to identify the difference between the external costs of conventional sources (fossil and nuclear) and those of the new renewables — wind, solar etc. Because the new renewables have very limited pollution emissions, it has often been assumed that they have negligible external costs. Early analyses (e.g., Hohmeyer, 1988) tended to confirm this judgement.